Jamelle Jones at High Tech Elementary North County shares how students explore play as their work and how it reflects their work during instruction.
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JAMELLE: So in this play, students actually had about 45 minutes of free, unstructured playtime. I do this all of the time with first graders, because play is their work. So as students are playing, what I’m doing is I’m looking at how students interact with each other. I’m looking at how students interact with the materials with little to no guidance. I’m also looking at how students expand their thinking while in play.
STUDENT: It’s a skyscraper!
JAMELLE: Skyscraper, OK. And I’m thinking about how students are making choices during play, because the choices that they’re making during play will also play out in their instruction. I’m looking at how students communicate with each other before, during, and after play. And the most exciting thing for me is to see how they reflect about their play. I also noticed– and I got so excited with this– I noticed some of you were cleaning up your space before you went to another space. But then I saw some really cool things that was happening in the different sections. I saw some hearts working with shapes, I saw some hearts– Julianna, where’s your paper? Julianna, where is she–
STUDENT: It’s on my table.
JAMELLE: Oh, can you go get it so we can see? So, what Julianna did, she took the shapes, she made this really cool design, and then I thought, oh my goodness. At some point, she’s going to have to make another design, but how are we going to remember the design she made? So she drew the design that she made. Can you tell us what it is?
STUDENT: Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer!
JAMELLE: She made Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer! And yeah, for some of you, it looks like it’s a face. Then I was walking around, I saw some hearts making animals. But they didn’t just make the animals with the pattern blocks and the shapes, they turned the animals into artwork. I had no idea that was going to happen. So we have that, then I saw lightning strikes. I saw musical instruments you all were making. I saw towers, rockets, and a skyscraper.
STUDENT: Don’t forget about the bosses!
JAMELLE: I was going to ask you about the bosses. But we’ll come right back the bosses. The skyscraper, what was that? Who can tell me, what was the skyscraper all about? Who can tell us? Lyla, what was the skyscraper all about?
STUDENT: The skyscraper was like, really tall.
JAMELLE: So it was like just a big, tall tower?
STUDENT: Yeah.
JAMELLE: And how did you all think to do that? Did it just kind of come up, or what happened? Yeah, Huxley?
STUDENT: We was first making a out of blocks, but then we made it into a tower. And then we keep stacking stuff on, to make a skyscraper.
JAMELLE: Wow, so you started with one idea, one design, and then from that design, you created a totally new, different design. That is how our brains work. Awesome job.
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